This will definitely take a while, as I will be shifting my blog onto DigitalOcean completely, since the previous providers I’d been with since 2003?5? have shut down. It’s a minor miracle that the site and the domain live on, to be honest.

ST Forum letter: Good coach, marketing are what local football needs. Chan Siang Ming, July 27 2017

So I wanted to reply to this letter on the day it was published, but life got in the way. ST Forums have an exclusivity clause which expires if they don’t contact you after five working days, which I can safely say have passed, which means here is my reply, which hasn’t been substantively changed by the intervening SEA Games and friendly results:

I agree with Mr. Chan’s assertion (Good coach, marketing are what local football needs) that more needs to be done to promote local football. The fact that fans had to choose between Chelsea vs Bayern and Home United vs Warriors on the same night is a planning catastrophe that could have been avoided.

I was recently reminded of my tweet in response to the @hellofrmSG on 9th August (at the time, it was someone else, not whoever you see in the card above, it changes every week) after our table-tennis loss in the Olympics.

There’s an imgur entry making the rounds on Facebook that looks like a damning comparison of how Singapore treats home-grown sporting talents. I’m not going to show it, but you’ve probably already seen it.

A friend of mine asked on Facebook if it were possible to add subtitles into a video, and I felt VLC would be the best tool for this. But I didn’t know quite how it should be done. So I looked for a short video I had downloaded that would be nice to test this with, and tried it out… Continue reading →

Under their first head coach V. Sundramoorthy, the LionsXII won the Malaysian Super League (MSL) in 2013, and enjoyed successful runs in the Malaysia Cup. Their home stadium, Jalan Besar, was inhospitable for visiting teams, and the King George Stand — specially built for this club — sparked many a cheer thanks to the likes of the raucous ExcluSinga.

While the LionsXII grew from strength to strength, the Singapore side notched their names on the AFF Suzuki Cup for a record fourth time, beating Thailand 3-2 on aggregate in the final. It would be a fitting farewell to the then national coach Radojko Avramovic.

So maybe I was proven wrong. So maybe the LionsXII weren’t such a bad thing after all? (Never mind that when V. Sundramoorthy took over as caretaker national coach, we lost comprehensively to Jordan.) Continue reading →

Just realised my last post was at the beginning of the season with Cottbus 3-1 win at Osnabrück.

Now VfL have thrown away a 2-0 lead at the start of the second phase to gift Energie Cottbus a 2-2 draw, and the year is almost over.

Time is running out if I’m to put something up at Interspeech 2015, Dresden… 20 March 2015 is the deadline. Just reminding myself out here. And given that the bulk of January will be gone, time is indeed tight.

Had some help from Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung and Goal.com Tanzania (oddly enough) as I wrote this practice piece for VfL’s opening-day home loss to Energie Cottbus. Comments always appreciated. Continue reading →

It’s been a comfortable off day for me from ICT, probably enough of a recharge to get back to work in good form. There’s a lot of work waiting, and the range of projects approaching will be quite the challenge. Even though they are essentially the same main projects I was working on before this enforced break, having been away for two weeks means they will be as good as completely new tasks.

I should probably get to sleep soon; I haven’t felt this rested in a long time and I don’t think I want to lose it.

Oh, and by the way, I’ll be manning comms for @hellofrmsg next weekend. So excited 🙂